Good Fruit

“This is what the Lord God showed me—a basket of summer fruit.  He said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.”  Then the Lord said to me, “The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by.”
Amos 8:1–2
 
Most people think of summer fruit as a lovely arrangement of fresh, juicy fruit, but in this vision of summer fruit was of the over-ripe, soon to be rotten variety. It was a sort of object lesson to explain the state of Israel. You might ask yourself, what would cause God to be so harsh. In verses 4–6, Amos gives some of the specific reasons why God had to bring judgment upon the nation of Israel:
 
– Lack of concern for the poor and needy
– Love of money
– Cheating for material gain
– Religious hypocrisy
– Abuse of power in terms of slavery
 
The time of Israel’s reign would soon be past its expiration date. God’s concern for social justice is expressed in other places in the Bible as being “fruitful or bearing good fruit.” What we do, in the name of Jesus, matters. Marks of faithful Christianity are concern for poor, needy, widows or other socially vulnerable people, economic justice, and understanding our proper place-being under the reign of the true God. Where are the places where our fruit is going bad? Do we really care about the poor? What does economic justice look like in our church or our denomination? Where is God’s harvest of good fruit?
 
In Christ, 
Rev. Elyse Milligan Nielsen